Gareth Porter: Rice and Gates Divided over Iran's Role in Iraq

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Rice and Gates Divided over Iran's Role in Iraq

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (IPS) - A State Department official's assertion in late December that Iran had exerted a restraining influence on Iraqi Shiite militia violence signaled a major divergence of views between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defence Robert Gates over how to portray Iran's role in Iraq.
In an interview with the Washington Post published Dec. 23, David Satterfield, a senior advisor to Rice and coordinator for Iraq, attributed to Iran a deliberate decision to help calm the situation in Iraq rather than to inflame it. Satterfield told the Washington Post that the decline in the number of attacks by Mahdi Army militiamen since August "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision" and suggested that the policy decision had been made "at the most senior level".

Satterfield did not say that the new Iranian policy line was permanent, but he insisted that there had been such a "consistent and sustained diminution in certain kinds of violence by certain kinds of folks" that it could not be explained solely on the basis of internal factors in Iraq.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker also told the Post that "the freeze on JAM operations that began four months ago would not exist without Iranian approval".

Those positive descriptions of the recent Iranian role in Iraq came just after Defence Secretary Gates had refused to endorse such an assessment. At a press conference on Dec. 21, Gates was asked whether he had "seen any additional or more current information to suggest maybe Iran is playing a more constructive role in trying to seal its border from arms shipments and so on?"

He replied, "No, not yet."

Significantly, however, Gates also passed up the opportunity to say that Iran was playing a "destabilising role" in Iraq. Instead he said simply that the "jury is out" on the issue.

Gates mentioned the success of military operations against the Mahdi Army as well as the "ceasefire that has been put in place" as factors in the decline in attacks and said, "e don't have a good feeling...or any confidence in terms of how to weigh these different things."

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